Wednesday’s Buzz: 12.12.12

Sex Week is returning to Yale this academic year. The weeklong series of events on sex-related topics usually takes place once every two years, but students decided to start hosting the event series annually in order to make Sex Week more institutionalized and familiar to students. Organizers decided to abridge the event series into Sex Week(end), which will begin Feb. 28, 2013 and last through that weekend. Sex Week(end) Co-Director Ruby Spiegel ’15 said she expects the event series this year to be less controversial than last year, when a 2011 report from the Advisory Committee on Campus Climate recommended Yale ban the event series.

In an effort to create a safer campus environment, Yale administrators are launching two initiatives to address alcohol and drug use on campus. Yale College Dean Mary Miller and University Secretary and Vice President for Student Affairs Kimberly Goff-Crews announced the Yale College Dean’s Office Task Force on Alcohol and Other Drugs and the University Council Committee on Alcohol in Yale College in a Monday night email to the campus community. The task force will gather information from the campus community on alcohol and drug use and make recommendations to the Yale College Dean’s Office, while the committee will recommend proposals on University policy to top administrators.

Early applications for the class of 2017 to most Ivy League schools are more competitive than ever, keeping with the trend of the last decade. Yale’s early applications increased by 4.4 percent this year, while Princeton and Harvard — currently in their second early admissions rounds since reinstating their early action programs in 2011 — experienced increases of 10 percent and 18 percent, respectively. Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jeffrey Brenzel said in an email to the News that he believes some of the rise in applications across the board can be attributed to the increased perception that early admission programs, and particularly binding early decision programs, provide applicants with a better chance of acceptance.